by Gaël Malin
As we are dedicating this month to another language, we will take a journey and explore the ancient and sacred lingua franca of the Arab world: Arabic.
Arabic is the 5th most spoken language worldwide, with approximately 300 million speakers using it either as a first or second language. There is no such thing as an exact number of speakers since estimates can vary greatly based on what one considers part of the language. In terms of linguistics, Arabic is indeed a complex language, owing much to the fact that it encompasses about 30 distinct dialects along with a ‘standard’ Arabic, which can also be slightly different between countries. These dialects can be largely categorised into nine groups, including North African Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and Gulf Arabic. Arabic speakers share Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as a common literary language used in academic writing, mass media, official speeches and documents, and for religious purposes. Dialects, on the other hand, are widely spoken in more informal contexts and everyday conversations. This existence of two linguistic systems within a same language is labelled as ‘diglossia’ by linguists.
Arabic is the most spoken Semitic language, i.e. a language that belongs to the Afroasiatic language family and originated in the Middle East. Its speakers span across three main zones: the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, with about 25 countries regarding Arabic as an official or co-official language: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Arabic is also a national language or recognised as a minority language in six other countries including Turkey, Iran, and Mali, as well as one of the official languages of the United Nations. Egypt is home to the biggest group of Arabic speakers, followed by Algeria, Iraq, and Morocco.
A map of the countries where Arabic is an official or co-official language (www.worldatlas.com)
Arabic is a fairly old language, which linguists believe first appeared either in the Arabian Peninsula or Mesopotamia, possibly as early as during the first century CE. It has come to be the language of Islam and its core text, the Quran, serving as a political and cultural unifier of Arab communities. As a result of Muslims conquests, Islam was further spread outside of Arabia, within an empire that stretched from current Spain to Western India, and from Somalia to Sicily.
The Quran is the core religious text of Islam and was written in the Classical Arabic from which Modern Standard Arabic derives
Arabic has also been a long-time trading language, thriving thanks to the Middle East acting as a trade hub between Europe, Africa and Asia. Furthermore, the medieval Islamic world played a fundamental role in innovation, especially in the fields of engineering, textiles, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, with a prime example being the Arabic numerals. This influence is very much obvious when looking at some of the Arabic words that were borrowed in English. These include alcohol, algebra, algorithm, candy, coffee, cotton, crimson, satin, zenith, and zero,among others. With economic opportunities to grow in many parts of the Arabic-speaking world, there is no doubt the language will continue to generate an increasing interest both from potential learners and companies looking to reach new markets.